Closely Akin to Murder (11 page)

“This is not a television game show, and you don't get what's behind curtain number two until you produce Caron—and tell me what you know about the Oliver Pickett case.”

“You have to promise not to turn me in,” he said sullenly. “I never killed anybody, including Santiago. He and I got along just fine.” He pushed past me and headed for the steps, his sandals slapping on the floor like apathetic applause. “Your daughter's in the last bungalow. I've met bikers' chicks with cleaner mouths. How old is she, anyway?”

“Old enough to object to being kidnapped,” I said, wondering what she'd been reading lately. Mr. Dickens would never have used anything spicier than a “Balderdash!” or a “Pshaw!” Making a mental note to inquire into this at a later time, I followed Chico past the lobby and down a path lined with a few white rocks. There were six bungalows on each side; the ones away from the cliff were set high enough on the hillside to provide a view over the roofs of those opposite.

“If you didn't kill Santiago, who did?” I asked.

“Someone who didn't want you to question him,” he said without looking back at me. “He knew more than he let on about the night the girl killed the other girl's father. I don't know who was paying him to keep quiet, but after thirty years, he was still getting money in the
mail every year. He'd wave it around and talk about how he was going to restore this dump, but then he'd buy a bottle of tequila to celebrate. Within a week, the money would be pissed away.
Qué será, será
, I suppose.”

“Did he ever say who was sending the money?” I asked, frowning. Santiago did not sound as if he had had the wits or the wherewithal to track down Ronnie after she returned to the U.S. and changed her name. If by some miracle he had and she'd been sending money once a year, his name should have come to mind when the half-million-dollar demand was made.

“Once he and I were sharing a bottle when the letter arrived, and while he was chortling and counting the money, I happened to pick up the envelope. No return address, but it was postmarked here.”

He turned down a short path to a cliffside bungalow. The glass in the windows was held together with strips of peeling tape, and the door hung aslant on a single hinge. Moonlight illuminated broken tiles, bottles, tin cans, and what appeared to be the frame of a baby stroller.

He pushed aside the door and stuck his head inside. “Your mother's with me, so don't try anything funny.”

“I'm here,” I called. “Everything's going to be all right, dear.”

The inside of the bungalow was as black as the boiler at the bookstore. Chico stepped back and gestured for me to precede him, as if he believed Caron might come flying at him with a makeshift weapon of some sort.

“She's in the back bedroom,” he said. “I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I don't have the chance to talk to my fellow compatriots very often, you
know. We could have had a pleasant conversation if she'd ever quit carrying on like she was strapped on a rack in a dungeon.”

I tripped on some unseen object, but caught myself and reached the far side of the room. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the minimal light. Finally I made out a bed and a figure on it. I encountered no obstacles as I hurried over to the bed, sat down, and began to tug at the tape across Caron's mouth. The ripping sound was painful, but I kept at it until the tape came free in my hand.

“Kill him,” she croaked.

“Let me get you untied,” I said, working on the wire around her wrists.

“It's not like we have dinner reservations. I really don't mind waiting while you kill him.”

Her exhortation had merit, but I put it aside for the moment and twisted the ends of the wire until I'd removed it. “Are you okay?” I asked as I started on her ankles.

“Oh, I'm dandy, considering I was brought here with a knife poking my back and have been on this filthy, stinking mattress all day long.” She sat up and examined her wrists for signs of permanent scarring. “All I've had to eat since breakfast was a bag of some kind of vile banana chips. I refused to drink the water he gave me in a rusty cup, so he got me a bottle of orange soda that Wasn't Even Cold. Then he brought me this pathetic sandwich that tasted like week-old dog food. I am malnourished and dehydrated—but other than that, I'm just dandy.”

I unwound the wire around her ankles, then turned around and hugged her so tightly she groaned in protest. I felt wetness on my cheeks, but I wasn't sure
whose tears they were. Images of her infancy and childhood scrolled past me: bibs and bonnets, pigtails, scabby knees, birthday cakes and ice cream, petitions printed in crayon, the gathering thunderheads of puberty. When I could trust myself, I said, “Do you need me to help you get up?”

“Give me a minute,” she said. “My feet are numb from lack of circulation. If you hadn't found me tonight, you'd have to be looking up ‘amputation' in your Spanish phrase book.”

“It's
amputatión
,” Chico said, “and the wire wasn't all that tight. It's your own fault, anyway. If you hadn't tried to kick me in the face, I wouldn't have had to put the wire around your ankles.”

Caron sneered at him. “Well, excuse me. I guess I haven't read the Dear Miss Demeanor column on being held hostage.”

“Hush, dear,” I said, patting her knee. Chico had not yet pulled out a knife, but there was no need to provoke him into doing so. I glanced back at him and was disturbed to see he'd edged into the room, and now was within a few feet of the end of the bed. Doing my best to laden my tone with the menace of a gangster, I said, “Listen, Chico, you implied you know something significant about Oliver Pickett's death. Tell me what it is and I'll pay you. What you do after that is your own business.”

“The night he died, I was in the bungalow right across from his. I'd come to do some deep-sea fishing with a guy from work. I hadn't bothered with suntan lotion during the day, and the sunburn combined with a bad hangover kept me in. Most of the evening I sat out on my porch, nursing a beer, smoking dope, and watching the party get wilder and wilder. Santiago
kept flapping down the path like a wounded parrot to plead with Pickett's daughter. From what I could hear, she wasn't receptive. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I heard was the mighty Pickett himself bellowing so loudly they should have heard him down at the Hilton. The kids took off every which way. He went inside and bellowed some more; I heard his daughter's name more than once. It was so entertaining that I stepped inside to answer the call of nature, get another beer, and settle in for the show, but when I came back out, everything was as dark and peaceful as a cemetery.”

“Cemeteries aren't dark during the day,” Caron inserted acerbically. “No wonder you can't sell your so-called literary novels to anyone.”

I squeezed her leg to shut her up. “Go ahead,” I said to Chico. “Then what happened?”

“I opened a beer just as Pickett's daughter came out of the bungalow and ran toward the restaurant and parking lot. She was making all sorts of unholy noises. If she hadn't been running so fast, I would have wondered if she'd been stabbed in the gut. I was contemplating all this when I saw someone else come out of the bungalow.”

“Someone else?” I said. “Who?”

“Whoever it was did not have the common courtesy to come up to the well-lit path, but instead stayed in the shadows alongside the bungalows. It's a shame you can't ask Santiago for details. He was standing at the top of the path, and had a much better view of the person. Of course, he might have been disinclined to talk about it even after all these years. Be sure and mention all this in your article.”

“Mother,” Caron said, “I am the victim here. Whatever
happened thirty years ago is history. My blood sugar is dangerously low and I feel dizzy. Could you and this worm turd continue your conversation at a later time?”

Chico shook his head. “There's no reason to be verbally abusive. I explained to you why it was necessary for me to do what I did. In reality, this is your mother's fault for refusing to meet me on the beach last night.”

“Maybe you can explain it again at Manuel's funeral. I'm sure the family will be thrilled.”

I stood up and positioned myself between the two. “You'd better leave town as soon as possible,” I said to Chico. “Jorge Farias is very unhappy with you, and he seemed to think he would have no difficulty finding you. I don't think he wants to hire you as a chauffeur.”

“He drives worse than Rhonda Maguire,” Caron contributed from behind me, “and she flunked drivers' ed three times. After she ran over Coach Witbred's foot, he told her—”

“Let's be on our way, dear,” I said. “I'm sure Chico needs to start on his travel arrangements.”

“Farias?” he said, sounding as though he needed to start on his funeral arrangements. “He practically runs this town from his hillside mansion. He'll have men crawling all over the
Sona Rosa
by now. I'd planned on being in Mexico City before Manuel was found. Is he going to be okay?”

“You're damn lucky someone found him before he bled to death.”

“All I did was tap him on the head so he couldn't yell for help,” Chico said as he edged toward the door. “Before you leave, you might want to go out on the balcony and look around.”

“Why would I want to do that?” I asked.

“It's where Pickett's body was tossed.”

I was too startled to reply as he disappeared into the darkness of the front room. Moaning piteously, Caron got off the bed and said, “Well, at least you didn't give him any money. He should have to pay me for all my pain and suffering.”

I'd dropped my purse on the floor when I saw Caron. I located it and determined that the plastic bag had been removed while I'd been occupied with the tape and wire. “If we see him again, I'll mention it,” I said, mentally cursing myself for my carelessness.

We went out into the front room. Earlier I'd been too frantic to notice anything, but now I could see an opening that led to a balcony. Beyond that, the bay was outlined with tiny lights. It would have been quite romantic in a different situation.

“You're not really going out there?” Caron said in a shocked voice. “What if Chico's waiting to push you over the rail?”

“He's halfway to the border by now.” I managed to avoid any lurking obstacles and went out onto a spacious balcony. Two chairs implied the current occupants, allegedly the hookers from Honduras, still enjoyed the view, if not room service and the solicitous attention of Ernesto Santiago. The railing was four feet high. Throwing a body over it wouldn't have been easy, but Ronnie and Fran had been operating on a mixture of alcohol, marijuana, and adrenaline.

“Mother,” called Caron, “can we please go to the hotel? Being held hostage All Day Long has given me a headache.”

As I came back across the room, I realized that I'd been too worried about Caron to consider the consequences of putting all my cash in the bag. I had only a
few coins, mostly pennies and nickels. Furthermore, taxis were no longer lined up in the street to take guests down the hill to the beaches and nightclubs. It would take more than a signal from a phantom concierge to bring a taxi to the gate of the Hotel Las Floritas.

“We need to find a telephone,” I said to Caron as we trudged up the path. “I'll call Farias's office and ask for a car to be sent.”

“Or we can drive. As far as I know, my luggage and purse are still in the trunk of the Cadillac. I'll get into all kinds of trouble if I don't return the Dickens book to the school library. Being held hostage for a day is one thing, but Miss Ferrenclift will make sure I have detention every morning until I graduate.”

“Do you know where the car is?”

“Yeah, but I can't promise the keys are in it. I was a little distracted by the knife that moron kept waving at me.”

Instead of going out the gate, she led the way across the parking lot to a road that curled behind the restaurant to a service entrance. The Cadillac was partly concealed by a shed that was likely to have contained lawn equipment. I was about to open the driver's door when I saw the beady red glow of a cigarette above us on the terrace.

I hissed at Caron to be quiet and gestured for her to duck behind the car. We converged at the trunk.

“Now what?” she whispered. “I have no desire to stay here the rest of the night.”

“I don't know.” I slumped against the bumper and regarded the moon. Considering how the trip had gone thus far, I was surprised the craggy face wasn't spitting at me. The police had been here less than an hour ago to conduct a cursory inspection; they would not have
returned so soon. Chico would not have lingered to admire the view one last time. The most probable explanation was that one of the other residents had decided it was safe to move back into a bungalow. And what an upstanding group they were.

Caron jabbed me. “Why are we sitting here? I am going to Absolutely Die if I don't take a shower before too long. That mattress was so nasty that I can feel things crawling all over me. What if I have fleas?”

“Did you see anybody else when Chico took you to the bungalow?” I asked.

“Don't be absurd. Did you hear what I said? I am infested and in danger of catching the bubonic plague. I want you to promise that you'll have my body flown back to Farberville so Inez can put flowers on my grave every Sunday.” She paused to savor the macabre scene, then sighed. “She's kind of forgetful, though. Maybe it would be better to have me cremated so you can keep me in an urn on the mantel.”

“We don't have a mantel,” I pointed out, “but I could make a shrine on the bookcase in my bedroom . . . or in the front window at the Book Depot.”

“It would be an improvement.”